Liber Regie CapelleA Manuscript in the Biblioteca Publica, Evora

Walter Ullmann • Derek Howard Turner • 19619781870252997

The MS is Evora (Portugal), Bibliotheca Publica e Arquivio Distrital, MS CV/I-36. It represents a sort of customary or ordinal of the English court chapel in 1449, intended to govern the life of the 49 people, including choirboys, who were the staff of the peripatetic chapel. It was not a new composition at that time but was based on earlier drafts, and was furnished by William Say, Dean of the Chapel Royal (d. 1468), at the request of the Portuguese nobleman Count Alvaro Vaz d'Almada. The Count had been made a Knight of the Garter on 11 July 1445, and subsequently asked for a copy of the customary, which includes the coronation rites, for the young King Alfonso V, who had assumed government in 1448 at the age of 16.